Deadly Cross (Alex Cross #28)(70)

The sign was visible for about thirty seconds before he ducked down and lowered it.

“Lost him,” Montoya said.

“The sign returns in two or three minutes,” I said, spotting the guy with the shaggy blond hair holding the TAX THE RICH sign now. “Somewhere down here, below this guy and to his right.”

The shaggy-haired guy moved deeper into the crowd.

I pointed. “Stay where he was. Blow it up a little.”

We waited. I kept looking for the sign. A few minutes later, Bree said, “There he is, Dodgers cap, right side of the screen.”

Sure enough, he’d raised the SHOOT THE RICH sign again. But only for ten seconds, then he lowered it and disappeared into the crowd once more.

“Back out,” I said. “You should see me in about twenty seconds.”

Montoya gave the computer an order and the image gave us a wider-angle view. I could be seen moving in the opposite direction of the marchers toward the fixed group of protesters with Bree behind me.

Shaggy-haired guy started his tax-the-rich chant. Soon people around him were raising fists, yelling with him. When the chant was at its peak, he drifted out of the frame.

At first, I didn’t think much about it and kept looking for the Dodgers fan on the opposite side of the screen. But then I noticed the shaggy blond guy walk up to a seventy-year-old woman in a straw gardening hat and talk to her. She was carrying a sign that said the bankers did it.

Montoya froze the screen. “More?”

“Yes,” I said. “Just a minute or two.”

The security chief started the recording again.

Ten seconds into the footage, the old woman and the blond guy traded signs.





CHAPTER 80





I STARED AT THE SCREEN, not quite understanding what I was seeing, as Shaggy Hair bumped fists with the woman, turned, and went out of sight behind other protesters.

A few moments later, a man wearing a rust-colored wool cap, sandals, khaki green shorts, and a yellow tank top walked out of the throng onto Eleventh heading north. He was carrying a backpack and a sign that read THE BANKERS DID IT.

“That’s him,” I said, pointing at the screen. “I saw him. He’s the shooter.”

“How do you know that?” Sampson said.

“He’s wearing green khaki shorts because he zipped off the legs. He’s carrying a sign he traded an old lady for a few moments ago. And I am betting he’s got a shaggy blond wig in that backpack and a green khaki sun hat and a green khaki shirt with overly long sleeves with bullet residue on it and a small pistol of some kind. He was wearing a rust-colored knit cap when I saw him. His last name is Edmunds.”

I started toward the door.

“Alex!” Bree said. “How do you know all that?”

“Follow me, both of you, and I’ll explain.”

By the time we exited the hotel, most of the marchers had passed. The police had opened the avenue to vehicular traffic, and the knot of protesters across Pennsylvania had dwindled to no more than thirty.

I was going to head straight up Eleventh to try to find the patrol officer who’d checked Edmunds, but then I noticed that the older woman with the gardener’s hat was still there with the remaining protesters.

“I want to talk to this woman first,” I said. “She’s still got Edmunds’s sign. Call dispatch. Find out the name of the female officer who was checking IDs at the north end, west side of Eleventh. See if she took a picture of his ID.”

Bree started the call, and Sampson and I went up to the older woman and introduced ourselves.

Her name was Elodie Le Chain. She was seventy-four, a widow from northern Maine who had come by bus to join the protest. “Someone has to stand up and say something when an old lady like me has to chop firewood to heat her house,” she said.

“I’m sorry to hear that, ma’am,” I said, putting on latex gloves. “Could we take a look at your sign, please?”

Mrs. Le Chain frowned but nodded and held it out. I took it. The handle was a wooden broomstick. The sign itself was made of two pieces of white poster board stapled to the upper broomstick. It was blank on the back with TAX THE RICH on the front and three of the sort of O-rings you see in binders punched through the tops of the poster boards.

“Why the O-rings?” Sampson said.

I thought that was odd as well. I turned the sign sideways and noticed a seam on the front poster board as if two pieces of it had been sandwiched together. Sampson gave me a pocketknife. I worked the blade into the seam and got it apart; they’d been held together with Velcro along the edges.

I got both pieces separated and flipped the TAX THE RICH sign backward on the O-rings, revealing another sign: shoot the rich.

“What’s that say?” Mrs. Le Chain said. “I don’t agree with that. I think they should pay taxes like everyone but I don’t want them dead.”

“I’m sure you don’t, ma’am, but we’re going to have to take this as evidence. We suspect the man who gave it to you was involved in a shooting earlier.”

“No!” she said. “He was a nice young man. He was from Maine too. Portland.”

We got her contact information and left her to see Bree trotting our way on the west side of Eleventh. I pivoted the sign to show her the SHOOT THE RICH graffiti.